Like many Americans, Carolina Giuliani was paralyzed over the prospect that Donald Trump — the man she blames for ruining her father and damaging her family — could be close to returning to the White House.

“It’s a hard phenomenon to understand. It definitely is,” Carolina Giuliani said. “I view Trump as a disease, and I think it’s really important to remember that with every disease, prevention is a much more effective strategy than treatment. … I thought we had cured ourselves of it the first time, but it doesn’t seem like we have.

“And I think if he becomes the president again, we may have a terminal illness in our country. And that really, really scares me.”


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  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    She’s close. Trump isn’t the disease, though, he’s a symptom. The disease is Christian nationalism, and it’s been festering far longer than Trump has been on the national scene.

    The disease lies in the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and a few other groups hell-bent on turning the US into a theocracy. They’ve been working on this for a very long time, and have been testing the fences for decades, like velociraptors, only making their move now they’ve found all the weaknesses they need to succeed.

    It worries me how focussed people are on the threat trump poses, because even if he dropped dead today, it would only be a temporary inconvenience to these dominionists who have infiltrated nearly every facet of the US government. They will not stop if trump disappears, or if Harris is elected.

    Please, watch The Family documentary. You’ll be amazed and likely sick at how deeply they’ve embedded themselves.

      • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        Yes, thank you! There are a few others, and these aren’t disparate groups. They all work together.

        e: The membership Venn diagram is often a circle.

      • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        Here’s another recent article (2022) that goes into more detail: Who are the Dominionists backing conservative candidates?.
        And another: Dominionism Rising: A Theocratic Movement Hiding in Plain Sight

        Other notable dominionists:
        Ron DeSantis
        Ted Cruz
        Kari Lake
        Amy Coney-Barrett
        Brett Kavanaugh
        Mike Johnson
        Mike Pence
        Roger Stone
        Tucker Carlson
        Bill Barr
        Pretty much everyone in Trump’s orbit.

        There are hundreds more. This should scare the shit out of all of us.

        Here’s the Wikipedia article on Christian Dominionism.

        This is not fringe. It’s mainstream.

        e: names

          • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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            3 months ago

            That’s fair. It’s hard to know what a snake actually thinks. He’s been sliming for their cause since Nixon*, though, so this may be a distinction without a difference.

            e: my autocorrect hates me.

            • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Exactly! Nixon wasn’t driving towards some Dominionist shit that I’m aware of. He was a crooked politician that worked for the nascent oligarchy. He deliberately fucked up peace in Vietnam to win an election. The shit that got him run out was small potatoes.

              Stone just wants to get paid and win.

              • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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                3 months ago

                No, I mean the opposite.

                Stone may not have been stanning for dominionism under Nixon (it was only a twinkle in their eye at that point), but Stone walks, talks, and quacks like a dominionist.

                Is he an opportunist or a believer? I can’t claim to know, but he says dominionist things, does dominionist things, and surrounds himself almost exclusively by dominionists, so he’s a de facto dominionist.

                e: I really should learn to spell, and also use words

                • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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                  3 months ago

                  I agree he’s looking duckish these days but I still think he believes in nothing but money, fame, and power. And here we are talking about him. 🦆☝️

                  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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                    3 months ago

                    Sorry to keep clarifying, but I want to make sure people understand the depth of this threat.

                    The only reason you could credibly claim Stone isn’t a dominionist is because it didn’t quite exist when he was criming for Nixon.

                    He was intimately involved with the founders of dominionism, and worked very closely with all those same people during its rise over the past few decades, and now works so closely with its adherents, they could all be a Cronenberg monster.

                    e: nevermind, I get your point. He’s a mercenary, and I agree, but his position as a mercenary specifically for dominionists makes him especially dangerous, IMO.

    • Etterra@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      They also have been moving pieces into place at the lower levels of government. They need to cheat as hard as possible to overcome their ever-growing unpopularity.

    • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The disease is the dixiecrats, Christian nationalism is the latest syndrome after we tried to treat jim Crow and the KKK, which was what was left over after slavery went into brief remission during reconstruction.

      The south will always find a new way to be evil and un-American, it’s their legacy.

    • brianary@startrek.website
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      3 months ago

      This is all true, but there’s not clear line of succession after Trump, so they’ll splinter. Redirecting the fervor to some new dear leader will take a long time. The Trump thralls are entirely invested in him alone.

      • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        I think part of the danger here lies in ascribing too much power to the presidential office. I can easily name dozens of dominionists in Congress, thousands in state office, and they’ve captured the Supreme Court. They’ve infested government at local levels, too. The president is just icing.

        I think people put too much emphasis on the president, and mostly ignore the real threat. Trump is absolutely replaceable. People make fun of trump’s ‘3D chess’ phrase as though he meant it as a metaphor for thinking ahead – but he got that phrase from Bannon, and Bannon wasn’t talking metaphorically. Bannon meant it literally, as they were moving ‘tens of thousands of operatives’ (his words) like chess pieces into local and state office over the past couple of decades, ready to move and checkmate the government from within. And they’ve done that.

        • brianary@startrek.website
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          3 months ago

          You may be right, but it seems to me that sleeper cells need direction. Otherwise, they’ll interpret their ideology divergently. They may block progress pretty effectively, but it’ll be hard for them to make gains in a shared direction.